Child Mortality: Nigeria Rank 3rd In The World
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The United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has ranked Nigeria 3rd in the world and number 1 in Africa with about 1 million children under the age of 5 dying yearly.
This was made known by Dr. Sanjana Bhardwaj, UNICEF Nigeria Chief of Health, during a One Day Technical Consultative Meeting on Ending Preventable Deaths of Children in Bauchi State which took place in Kano on Monday.
According to her, most of the cases which results to deaths among children under the age of 5, are actually preventable if such children were properly immunized.
That Nigeria is the country with the most children’s lives at stake, at nearly 3.1 million. To achieve the target, its annual rate of fall in child mortality needs to accelerate from 3.7% during 2006-16 to 9.6% during 2016-30.
“Nigeria has a total number of 4.3 million unimmunized children with Bauchi having a total of 183,342 unimmunized children and 1.3 million under 5 deaths”
Bhardwaj decry the high number of un-immunized children in the country describing it as unacceptable and call on government and all other stakeholders to come together to find a lasting solution to the problem which has lingered for quite some time.
